


Finest Hour

by Prochytes



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 05:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five occasions on which the First Lord of the Treasury met the Last Lord of Time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finest Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Small spoilers for "Victory of the Daleks". Originally published on LJ in 2012.

1\. November 10, 1899.

 

Winston had not expected circuses in South Africa.

 

“ _Clivia miniata_ doesn’t bloom in November, Doctor,” said the girl, trotting in the clown’s prismatic wake. 

 

“A flower you desiderated, Peri; a flower you shall have. Oh – it’s you.”

 

The clown’s eyes were fixed, inexplicably, on Winston.

 

“‘Flower’, Peri. An apt appellation for a _plant_ , I think you’ll agree. _Some_ would do well to remember that.”

 

Winston frowned. The clown harrumphed at him.

 

“I’m still doing it, you know. But you people don’t exactly make it easy. Come along, Peri,” the clown swept past, “this man has a train to catch.”

 

 

 

2\. July 12, 1925.

 

In Lahore, before the War, a train-load of soldiers drowned in roses. In darkling London, Justice had a sword and scales – and not the sort one used for weighing. These were stories that circulated with the clubland port. 

 

In many stories, there was a man, and a box.

 

Theories about him reflected upon the theorist. Disraeli had thought him a charlatan. Gladstone had fancied him an angel. (Rosebery had just fancied him. To each his own.) Balfour – haunted, always, by the contented silence of the universe – first, perhaps, intuited the truth.

 

Winston watched the man in the opera-cloak, and wondered.

 

 

3\. August 28, 1939. 

 

“I think you’ve had enough to drink now, Winnie.”

 

This version wore a frock-coat, and wore it well. 

 

“I don’t.  You’re a bastard, Doctor. You’ve lived a thousand years...”

 

“Not _quite ‘_ a thousand years’. Although that’s certainly a resonant phrase...”

 

“... and you won’t tell a fraction of what you know.”

 

“... makes a nice contrast with an ‘hour’, too, if you ask me.”

 

“You’re blathering , man.”

 

“Perhaps.” He rose. “I have to go. Bad news from Arcadia.”

 

“Will we survive this, Doctor? Will any of us ride out the storm?”

 

“I don’t know, Winnie. I honestly don’t know.”

 

 

4\. April 17, 1960.

 

“You were a journalist,” said the little girl.

 

“I was, my dear. There was also the small matter of running the country...”

 

“Yes. That’s nice, too. What was it like to be a journalist?”

 

“Stop bothering Sir Winston, Sarah Jane. He has work to do.”

 

“True no more, alas,” said Winston, as the girl and the woman accompanying her departed. “All I have now are erotic dreams about Cleopatra. You wouldn’t happen to know what engendered those?”

 

He tootled on his recorder, and looked perplexed. 

 

“You were right, you know. ‘Hour’. Not ‘flower’. It made for a far superior peroration.”

 

 

5\. November 21, 1963.

 

In the end, there was only the surly advance of decrepitude. But Winston had an appointment in Shoreditch, and kept it.

 

When he stepped out of the junkyard – so old, so _young_ – it was as that delectable blonde once said:  _One day he will look at you like a stranger_. 

 

Winston cleared his throat.  “You don’t know me. But I have a favour to ask. Look after them all, you hear me? Especially that preposterous pup I used to be.”

 

His eyes narrowed. “You have the advantage of me, sir.”

 

Winston smiled. “It only took a lifetime to manage that.”

 

FINIS

 


End file.
